The history of education has featured a number of longstanding debates over educational adequacy. Debates over funding have touched on whether foundation-type programs can assure adequacy despite funding-level differences between districts. The relevance of teacher training and unionization to teacher adequacy is questioned, as is the ability of standardized curricular programming to counteract teacher inadequacy. Standards for facility adequacy, raised over the years, are currently being challenged as irrelevant. The debate over curricular adequacy has focused on whether students do better when offered choices or when required to follow stringent programs. The achievement of education's early goals of developing a Christian, responsible, and productive citizenry was measurable only by assessing changes in the quality of the society at large. More recently, emphasis has shifted to the individual's vocational interests, permitting educational adequacy to be measured in terms of education's effects on individual earning power, though the means for measuring these effects remain debatable. Educational history provides several conflicting definitions of educational adequacy, based on widely divergent concepts of both the purpose of education and the nature of the student population. Society's ever-shifting needs make it unlikely that any permanent, conclusive definition can be found. (PGD)